Price information?

[TranquilNightElf]

Has blizzard released information on it's pricing for the game as well as different schemes?

[Exedore]

They haven't released anything yet, other than saying they're looking into a variety of payment options. I think EBgames had a one month pre-paid card listed on their website for $15 USD, but the price is most likely inaccurate, and I'm not even sure if the cards will exist.

[Maegtelluma]

That is a placeholder price. Most people believe that in order to knock EQ blizzard will charge a little less, maybe $10-12 / month.

[BSTRhino]

I heard $12 per month a long time ago, with discounts for paying in advance. Now I think it's $15, but I can't remember where I read it.

GuildWars, another MMORPG which is made by previous Blizzard employees, has no per month price at all. I think that a per month price doesn't only cost dollars, but it also costs effort trying to convince parents, so I am actually leaning to purchasing GuildWars instead. It's probably just as good as World of WarCraft, considering it's made by the same people under a different name.

[Exedore]

Unless Guild Wars has changed significantly since E3, it's about as MMO as diablo2. If you think about it, that's all it really is - a 3D diablo2 with a different camera angle, but with a different gameplay pace. Every area with monsters is either solo or group, which cuts down a lot on server and bandwidth requirements.

I'm not saying that it won't be fun, but I currently prefer WoW over what I saw of Guild Wars during E3.

[Maegtelluma]

Nothing offensive, but from the quick look at Guild Wars that I took I was not as impressed as I was with World of WarCraft. However, I am going to look into the beta, since its free and will be a "hold off" until Blizzard finally gets WoW on the market.

[spastic-ninJa]

I expect that 6-month / yearly subscription cards might be in place as an additional subscription option, with a rather useful discount in contrast to the US$10 - 15/month that is currently being thrown around. If this were the case, I would probably grab a six-month card, which will expire a bit before my mid-year exams for next year. Not only that, but we have Christmas (and birthdays :P) to look forward to :)

[BSTRhino]

Good point, I did more reading and yeah, Guild Wars is definitely not as much of an MMORPG as WoW is. There is a heavy amount of instancing that goes on.

However, I don't know if WoW is justified with $15 a month. When I bought StarCraft, it was $30, so that'd mean I could probably be buying a full new game every two months.

[hammocksleeper]

$one hundred bajillion, and $fifty per mo.

Haha just kidding, it's really only $48/mo.

[Maegtelluma]

I won't pay more than $15 a month. I did see a site that would "pay your monthly fees if you give us x gold", but I'm not quite sure how much Blizzard likes that process ;)

[spastic-ninJa]

Ha ha!

That'd be hillarious. Spend a weekend or so trading to get a lot of gold, then transfer it to the site ;)

Seems good on paper, but would be pretty stupid to attempt :P

[Maegtelluma]

Well this would be something to try in...small increments ;)

[hammocksleeper]

I don't understand...why would someone be willing to shell out (an EXTRA) $15 a month to these players for some fake online gold? It's not a profitable endeavor...unless you are really addicted..

[spastic-ninJa]

It seems so... scammy ;)

You never know... maybe they make more money by paying for people's monthly fees, getting their gold, buying items, and selling them online for a larger profit? The mind boggles :o

[Maegtelluma]

I don't understand...why would someone be willing to shell out (an EXTRA) $15 a month to these players for some fake online gold? It's not a profitable endeavor...unless you are really addicted..
You give them ten gold, they give you about $12-13, higher around release. Then, they sell it on ebay for ridiculous amounts, like $180 for 100G. The sad part is how people buy it on ebay, IGE, etc. Surprisingly though, it happens a ton.

[hammocksleeper]

How long would it take a normal person to accumulate 10 gold?

[Exedore]

How long would it take a normal person to accumulate 10 gold?

What level? Probably just a few hours for a level 50-60 character.

[Maegtelluma]

Not too long. A high level character could do it in a night...and since that would pay for a month, not a bad deal. For a >40 character, it could easily take a few days, maybe a week or so.

[Kaervek]

...so what's the projected release date?

[Graeme]

Well, that's hard to say really. Blizzard has let a few statements about the release but none have really been clear. However, I'll post a few news excerpts and see if I can discern something from them for you :P.

September 13 - London Article:
Dates

The Blizzard tour is doing a country a day!

The release date for the US is not confirmed, however the Producer mentioned the Euro launch would be out likely before Christmas, and that the US release would be a couple of months before that…

The European beta is coming soon, likely within two weeks. In fact, the Producer said, they are counting down in days not weeks!

There will not be a worldwide release. US and Asia will be released first, with Euro a couple of months after (this winter for Euro, it was hinted).

The Euro beta has already begun, so they've kept their word on that. If they are, in fact, on time with production and testing, we should see retail within a few weeks to a month - based off of this knowledge. On the same note, I can't imagine Blizz would release WoW after Christmas, so they'll likely push for a Christmas release regardless.

More recently, from an October 25th statement (regarding companies estimating the retail date):
We appreciate everyone's interest in determining when World of Warcraft will ship, but while we are rapidly approaching the open beta period and we are confident that we will meet our goal of shipping the game before the end of this year, nailing down an exact ship date is a little more complicated due to a number of factors. As soon as we have a specific date to announce, we will be excited to share the news with everyone. Please don't consider any announced release dates official until such an announcement comes from Blizzard. This is true for all announcements related to Blizzard games.

This also agrees with the above statement. They haven't set anything in stone, but you can bet they'll hit the Christmas season for good sales ^_^.

Now, to take a few more things into consideration:
* Closed beta ended yesterday in anticipation of the stress test. The stress test is available to all people that have participated in the closed beta - in other words it's not the open beta people have been talking about (afaik). I can't see this lasting longer than a week (two max).
* Shortly after the stress test, Blizzard will release the open beta test, available to anyone who has the time to download the client. The open beta stage won't be a 'testing' stage really, as at this point I'm sure Blizz will have already gone gold. I'd imagine the open beta will last max a week, as most open betas do.

So taking everything into consideration, I'm hoping we'll see retail for mid-November. This estimation is pretty much common across the numerous fansites as well.

[Kaervek]

Sounds exciting. You can bet that I'll be picking this up the second I see it on store shelves. Blizzard games are usually a must-buy, but a MMORPG? Yah, you know that's gonna be a keeper ;)

Has anybody here that's been beta testing had any experience with Final Fantasy XI? Any compare-and-contrast statements? Know where I can get some unbiased comparisons? I'm asking here because you've all more than likely got a grasp of much more fan-sites than I've been exposed to. The closest I've really gotten to any WoW info has been Exedore's constant away message on AIM :P

[Graeme]

Sorry, I feel like I'm leaving you hanging here :P. I do plan on writing up an extensive review of WoW in contrast to a few other popular MMOs, but I'm just currently lacking time. I'll likely get to it either tomorrow or the day after ^_^.

For now, this post will just be a place holder.

[spastic-ninJa]

Sorry I can't be very specific, but my friend (a pretty hardout FF gamer :) ) wasn't too pleased with the state of FFXI, and I've heard other people's opinions which are similar, but I can't compare it to WoW, because I haven't played either game :P

[TranquilNightElf]

hmm..Interesting...
15 bucks a month sounds a bit much...I hope they settle at a price of like 10/month.
Hopefully they would also come up with schemes which would give a gamer a discount if say he/she buys a yearly card or a two yearly card .....something to that effect.

If I had to choose between WoW and GW on my immediate buy list however..I'd settle for GW for reasons already mentioned+I found it to be rather enjoyable. I haven't played Diablo 2 so fortunately/unfortunately I don't have the luxury of making comparisons between the two.
WoW does seem like an awesome game but currently it looks too pricey especially when you have to pay for it in Rupees :(

[Kamikazie190]

After the initial free one-month subscription ends, players of World of Warcraft will be able to continue playing under one of three different subscription plans. The month-to-month subscription plan costs $14.99 per month, the three-month plan costs $13.99 per month, and the six-month plan costs $12.99 per month. World of Warcraft subscription fees can be paid by major credit card, PayPal, and pre-paid game cards, which will be available in stores where World of Warcraft is sold. World of Warcraft has received a Teen rating from the ESRB.


Oh yeah! Finally some solid facts.

[hammocksleeper]

Those cats are making so much profit...let's try to figure out how much. How many people do you think use the servers in a month, and how much bandwidth)? And (for the purposes of back-of-the-envelope calculation) how much would it cost to get hosting on servers using this amount of bandwidth per month (or year or whatever)?

[spastic-ninJa]

Also deduct staff payments. All-in-all though, you're right, Blizzard is going to earn bigtime from this project.

(More funds for more games! ;))

[bluemicrobyte]

More funds to make WoW free one day :)

(I've always wondered, does an MMORPG ever hit a point in its life where the monthly fee is either dropped or significantly lowered?)